So every time I see these AUs, it's always Rose who had the little job in the coffee shop while the Doctor struts around being his fantastic self, so I decided to turn the tables a bit. The Doctor is the barista who needs Rose Tyler, a woman he's never met, to save him from Reinette, a woman he wished he'd never met.
"Bonjour, James," a familiar voice purred from behind him as John Smith wiped down a table in TARDIS café.
He sighed before putting a smile on his face and turning to face the woman. "Good morning, Reinette," he said politely. Reinette had been a regular at the coffee shop for the past two months, and made a show of flirting with him regardless of whether he went along with it or not. She'd gotten more persistent over the past few weeks, but John didn't know how to let her off without sounding like a complete prick, so he plastered a fake grin on his face and hoped she'd eventually get bored and move on.
That didn't seem to be the case.
Reinette reached forward and fiddled with his tie, making him particularly uncomfortable. "Will you make my coffee for me, mon chère?" She smiled flirtatiously and batted her eyes at him.
He took a step back from her, only to have her tighten her grip on his tie. Ah. How was he supposed to get out of this without driving off one of their best customers? "Sorry, Reinette, I've got to finish cleaning the tables. Donna will make your coffee." He told her, tugging on his ear.
She pouted and titled her head to the side. "But she doesn't make it quite like you do," she whined, stepping forward again until she was very much occupying James's personal space. He shrugged, and she sighed dramatically. "Perhaps after you're finished working, you could come by my place and make me a coffee?" She suggested boldly, pulling his tie out from under his suit jacket and tugging him closer to her, looking at him through her eyelashes.
"James," Martha's voice made him jump, and he turned his head to see his manager poking her head out of the staff room and looking at him with raised eyebrows. He gently put his hands on Reinette's shoulders and pushed her away, earning another flirtatious pout.
"Yes?" He flinched at how his voice squeaked.
Martha's lips pressed together as she fought a laugh. "I just got off the phone with your girlfriend," she told him. Girlfriend? He didn't have a girlfriend. "She wanted to know when you finished today. She's taking you to lunch. You don't mind that I told her, do you?" Her eyes flicked over to Reinette, who, while having given him some space, was still hanging on to his tie.
Oh. This was Martha saving him from his too-persistent female suitor. Gratefulness bubbled in his throat. "Of course. Thanks, Martha." He said with a smile. She grinned back and ducked back into the staff room, closing the door gently behind her.
He turned his attention back to Reinette, who was now looking rather put out and still pouting at him. For Pete's sake, was she five years old? "You never told me you had a girlfriend," she told him pitifully, her lower lip sticking out slightly.
He blinked. "Didn't I? I must have."
She released his tie, but continued to follow him like a lost puppy as he moved to clean the tables. "How long have you had this girlfriend?" She asked him.
"Three months," he answered, feeling distinctly uneasy.
"Three months and you hadn't told me?" She asked in surprise, and he hoped she wasn't seeing through his rather transparent lie.
"We've only just worked out the details," he continued to lie, knowing he was digging himself into a rut he probably wouldn't be able to get out of.
"I see," Reinette replied drily from behind him. "Perhaps I will stay until your break so I can meet the mysterious woman." With that, she marched away from him, heaving over to order her coffee.
He let out a breath of relief, glad to have her out of his hair, and finished wiping down the tables before quickly sliding into the staff room, where Martha was sitting at their shared computer desk, doing some paper work. "Girlfriend?" He asked after firmly closing the door behind him.
Martha looked up from her work and smirked at him, taking in his dishevelled appearance. He quickly went to work fixing his tie. "Well, hello, lover-boy." She teased, laughing when he glared at her. "Relax, James. It got her off your back, didn't it?"
"Yes," he huffed, "but now she wants to hang around and meet the girlfriend." He told her with another glare, shaking his head when Martha laughed again.
"God, she's determined, isn't she?" His manager chuckled. "But I thought she might, so I rang up a friend of mine. She'll be here at the end of your shift."
He grimaced. "Did you tell her she might have to deal with Reinette?"
She grinned at him. "Yep."
His eyebrows shot up. "Who'd be willing to deal with that?" He demanded.
Martha laughed again, and he let out an annoyed sighed. "Count yourself lucky she owes me a big favour."
"Must be quite the favour," he remarked. "What's her name?"
"Rose."
Two hours later
"Hi," a light voice made Donna look up from where she was placing napkins into take-out bags, and she looked up to see a young blonde standing unsurely at the register.
"Morning," Donna greeted with a smile that made her cheeks ache. She was tired of smiling. "What can I get for you?"
"I'm – um – actually looking for someone? James." The blonde replied, a slightly unsure look in her eyes. Donna took her in carefully, wondering if James had ever mentioned having a sister or a girlfriend. She was dressed in an expensive looking black pea coat which was cinched tightly around a small waist, and a light-looking pink scarf was tied peeking out from the collar of the coat. The clothes looked far too expensive for her to be related to James, who seemed to always where a tight suit, whether in pinstriped brown or dark blue. Donna glanced over the woman's shoulder to see Reinette staring at her intently.
"Hm," Donna huffed, putting down the napkin she'd been about to place in a take-away bag. "Just a minute." She stepped away from the cash and went to the staffroom.
James and Martha were both bent over a piece of paper, discussing something quietly, and they looked up when she stepped in. "What's up, Donna?" Martha asked, frowning at the woman who was supposed to be working the shop.
"There's a girl here asking for James," Donna replied, seeing how James and Martha exchanged a look.
"Blonde girl?" Martha checked.
"Yeah," Donna nodded. "Dunno what she sees in you," she sniffed, looking James over, "you're just a skinny boy in a suit."
Martha laughed. "That's Rose. Good luck, James," she nudged him with her shoulder. He straightened up and grabbed his coat, a long brown trench coat, checking his pockets to make sure he had his wallet and keys before leaving the staffroom with a quick wave to Martha, who waved back, a smirk on her lips. As soon as he stepped into the sitting area of the coffee shop, he saw Reinette's ornately pinned hair as the woman spoke to another girl, a blonde in a black coat holding a brown paper bag.
As he stepped closer, he could hear Reinette's voice, "– long have you two been together?" She was asking, a barely-hidden sneer in her tone.
The blonde's eyes flicked to him briefly and he mouthed three months, hoping she would be able to read his lips. The corners of her lips quirked into a small smile and she looked back at Reinette, a smile on her face. "Three months," she replied easily.
"He hasn't said anything about you," Reinette told her bluntly, making James flinch. There was no way he'd be able to explain everything in the same way he'd dealt with the last question.
But the blonde – Rose – obviously didn't need his help. She shrugged. "We only really made it official a couple weeks ago," she replied airily.
"Rose," James jumped in before the conversation could go any further, stepping around Reinette and smiling somewhat unsurely at his blonde not-quite girlfriend, knowing Reinette was watching the two of them intently.
Rose looked up at him a grinned, a knowing glint in her warm hazel eyes. She placed her gloved hand lightly on his shoulder and used it as support as she rose onto her tiptoes and kissed James lightly on the cheek. "Hi, James," she greeted him, her tongue poking out from under her canine as she smiled at him. "I hope you don't mind I called Martha."
"Of course not," he replied, his skin tingling where her lips had touched it. "I'm always happy to see you," he delighted when her smile widened, and he reached and took her other hand in his, the leather of her gloves obviously well broken in as he easily intertwined their fingers. He looked up and smiled politely at Reinette. "Have a good day, Reinette," he said with a quick wave before tugging on Rose's hand and leading her out of the shop.
As soon as they were out of the coffee shop he let out a relieved huff of air, and Rose looked up at him, wide smile on her lips and her eyes shining with mirth. "Thank you for that," he said vehemently.
"No problem," she replied. He began to pull his hand from hers, but she tightened her grip, and he looked at her in question. "We're still in view from the shop," she explained, and he turned back to see that they were, in fact, and that Reinette's eyes had followed them out.
He ran his hand through his hair and squeezed her hand in thanks, and she smiled up at him. Now that he didn't really have to act like he knew her already, he took finally took her in. Her hair had obviously been dyed, seeing as it didn't match her eyebrows, but he almost couldn't tell, suggesting it had been done at a high-end salon. She was wearing minimal makeup – just mascara, as far as he could see, a light pink scarf around her neck that seemed to be more for fashion than for warmth, and a black pea coat. She was quite pretty with her warm eyes and easy smile. "Sorry about this, Rose," he said sheepishly, "I hope Martha didn't interrupt anything important."
She smiled and shook her head. "Nothing important, nope," she teased. "I make my own hours, so it's fine."
"That sounds nice," he said wistfully, "what do you do?"
"I work for a private security company," she said. "Not very exciting, I assure you." He grinned down at her, and she winked, making him laugh.
"Not far, I hope?" He continued.
She shook her head again. "Not at all. I even left my car over there. I'll walk back later."
"Oh." He said simply, and they walked in silence for a few minutes before he spoke up again. "So what did you do to Martha to get stuck owing her a favour?"
She burst out laughing, eventually making him stop while she clutched her stomach. When it finally let up, she was wiping tears from her eyes. "She didn't tell you?" She said between chuckles.
"No," he answered, bewildered, "now I'm afraid of what I'm going to hear."
She pressed her lips together. "I shouldn't tell you anyway," she said.
"Oh, come on!" He whined, and she kept her lips tightly pressed together, her face contorting as she struggled not to laugh again. "Really?" He pressed, and she shook her head, making him groan dramatically.
"All that matters is that it was it big enough for her to call me up on a Saturday morning and tell me that I needed to pick up a bloke at the shop who couldn't get a certain woman to leave him alone," She teased, earning a sheepish smile from him.
"Reinette was holding my tie when Martha called you, did she tell you that?" He said amicably.
Rose gasped. "What? No way. How do you mean?"
He frowned as he thought of how to explain it, and his eyes fell on her scarf. His feet stopped, and, as their hands were still connect, Rose was brought to a sudden stop as well, making her stubble. He reached forward and gently untucked her scarf from under her jacket and, when it was completely free, he pulled it until his face was only a few inches from hers. Her eyes widened and he thought he heard her breath hitch in her throat, and when she met his gaze he saw that her pupils had dilated and her cheeks were tinging pink. Her eyes flitted down to his lips for a moment, and her teeth unconsciously sunk into her own bottom lip, making his heart speed up at the sight. His head tilted downwards without his permission, and her eyes widened further. She stepped away from him, only a step, but it was enough to shock him back into the present.
Rose coughed slightly. "I can – um – I can see why that would make someone uncomfortable," the words tumbled from her mouth without any grace or forethought.
He was happy that she still hadn't let go of his hand, and he wondered idly if she was even aware that she was. Their hands hand been swinging idly between them as they'd walked. "Yeah," he muttered, more to himself than to her. It hadn't escaped his own notice that where with Reinette barely two inches away from him, all he'd been able to think about was how to extricate himself from the situation, where with Rose he'd felt like he'd be content to stay in her space as long as she would allow him.
They walked in silence as minutes continued to tick by, each lost in their own thoughts, and he jumped when Rose broke the silence.
"Do you like chips?"
He looked down at her face to see her looking up intently at him. "What?" He said dumbly.
Her lips pulled into a smile. "Chips, James. Do you like chips?"
"Of course I like chips," he replied with a smirk, "everybody likes chips, Rose."
"There's a great chippy just two roads over," she told him, "and I am supposed to be taking you to lunch…"
His face broke into an cheeky grin. "Are you asking me on a date, Rose – " he frowned and looked at her, and she raised her eyebrows at him, sensing that the phrase wasn't finished. "I just realize I don't even know your last name."
She smiled again. "It's Tyler."
"Rose Tyler," he tested the name. It rolled off his tongue easily and he found he quite liked how it sounded. "That's a brilliant name. Rose Tyler." Her cheeks began to redden again, and he decided he quite liked that, too. "Are you asking me on a date, Rose Tyler?"
She quirked an eyebrow at him and looked him over. "Is chips a date?" she inquired, her tone serious but her eyes sparkling mischievously.
He mulled it over for far longer than he honestly needed to. "I think," he began dramatically, as he met her eyes, which, though warm with amusement, also held the slightest bit of uncertainty, "I think in this case, chips could easily be construed as a date."
She met his eyes for a few more seconds before shaking her head, a slightly annoyed smile on her face. "You avoided the question, James," she sighed, as dramatic as he had been. She slipped her hand out of his and into her jacket pocket. At his dejected expression, Rose chuckled. "She can't see us anymore." She told him playfully, butting his upper arm with her shoulder.
He shot her a pouting look that he knew was childish, but he didn't mind because she took one look at him and laughed at his audacity, which then made him grin goofily again. "I think, Rose Tyler," he didn't miss the slight shiver that passed through her when he said her name, and knowing that response made his pulse quicken again, "that going out for chips is a date, and," he reached into the pocket she'd just tucked her own hand into and wound their fingers together again before pulling both their hands out, "that I will hold your hand while we walk to our date." He was shocked at his own audacity, but she didn't pull away, so he kept his grip on her hand and let their joined hands hang between them.
She looked down at their intertwined fingers for several moments before looking at up at his face and meeting his gaze, seeing the barely contained hope on his features. "Then, I suppose, James…" she looked intently at him, waiting for him to fill the gap.
He grinned. "McCrimmon."
She nodded. "Then, I suppose, James McCrimmon, that I am asking you on a date."
"Do you really need that much vinegar?" James asked, wrinkling his nose in displeasure as he watched Rose pour an obscene amount of vinegar onto her basket of chips.
Rose finished pouring then placed the bottle back onto the table, it's supply severely depleted now that Rose Tyler had gotten a hold of it. "Old habits, I suppose. That's how my mum used to eat them, so that's how she'd give them to me. Now can't eat them without it." She popped a chip into her mouth and smiled at she chewed. He shook his head and ate one of his own chips, which had not been doused in vinegar.
"Ever think about travelling?" He asked once he'd swallowed his chip, looking at her intently.
She looked up at him with wide eyes, confused at the rapid change in topics. "What?"
"Travelling," he pressed, smiling at the lost look. "I've always wanted to travel, but I've had the time."
Rose absent-mindedly wrapped her lips around the tip of her thumb, sucking off any of the remaining vinegar from her skin and not noticing how James's breath hitched when he saw. "I've done quite a bit of travelling, actually." She told him with a smile.
"Really?" he leaned forward in his seat and regarded her with delight. "Where?"
She popped another chip into her mouth before speaking, her eyebrows pulling into a thoughtful frown as she struggled to recall everywhere she'd been. "Cardiff, obviously. Also sort of in the high lands of Scotland, visiting this beautiful old estate. Um, also France, Utah, Florida, New York, Turkmenistan…" her eyes lifted to the ceiling as she continued to list her travels, and she missed how James's eyebrows rose as the list seemed to go on and on. "I also have a friend in Canada that I see every few years, his name's Tim. He's a nice bloke. Where else? I think," she frowned, "that's it. I think."
"That's quite the list," James told her truthfully. "Who goes to Turkmenistan? Where even is Turkmenistan?"
Rose met his curious brown gaze, smiling widely. "Turkmenistan in the middle of a circle of more known middle eastern countries. It's surrounded by Iran to the southwest, Afghanistan to the southeast, Uzbekistan to the northeast, and the Caspian Sea at northwest. I was visiting the Darvaza Gas Crater."
"Darvaza Gas Crater?" James repeated, intrigued.
"It's also called the Gate to Hell," Rose told him ominously, a teasing twinkle in he eyes. "It's amazing. It's about 225 feet wide and 99 feet deep, and it just burns. All the time. About forty years ago some scientists set it on fire when it collapsed to get rid of noxious gases, and it just kept burning." Her eyes were wide and distant, as though she was no longer sitting across from him. "The way it continues to burn all the time really makes you think that if you stepped in there you might come across Satan." A shiver ran through her spine and she let out a huff of air before turning her warm eyes back on him. "Anyway, all that to say I've had the chance to travel a bit."
"A bit," James scoffed good-naturedly. "Is there any place you haven't been that you've always wanted to go?"
She frowned for a moment thinking about his question, and only a few seconds later a thought popped into her head and she looked at James with a wide smile and shining eyes. "Barcelona."
James raised an eyebrow. "You've been to Turkmenistan but not to Barcelona?"
Rose shrugged. "Barcelona doesn't have a pit of fire." She said simply, as though it were the simplest answer and really, he should have thought of that. He grinned before sneakily reaching over and stealing one of her chips. "Hey!" She called, affronted, as he smirked before putting the chip in his mouth. He grimaced as soon as the thing hit his tongue, the sharp tang of the vinegar burning his cheeks.
"Honestly, Rose. The vinegar? You're insane."
She shot him a glare. "If you don't like them, then eat your own!" She pushed his basket of chips closer to him and pulled her own closer to herself. "So where would you like to go?" She continued their previous conversation. "If you could go anywhere, where would you go?"
"Well, now," James drawled, making Rose's lips quirk into a smile. "What do you mean by anywhere?" He asked her.
Rose's eyebrows lifted. "What do you mean by 'anywhere'?" She repeated his question back at him, suddenly feeling like she'd completely lost track of the conversation.
James leaned forward on the table, and she mimicked his move, pushing her half-empty basket of chips out of the way so that she could meet him half way. In their mirrored positions, James's and Rose's faces were no more than four inches apart, and Rose didn't miss how James's eyes flicked briefly down to her lips before meeting her own hazel gaze. "What if anywhere actually did mean anywhere," James said quietly, barely hidden excitement on the features Rose found herself admiring – the fullness of his lower lip, the warmth of his molten chocolate eyes, and god, those freckles! How had she not noticed before?
He continued to tell her about how he envisioned time travel, and she found herself as the assistant, being dragged (or sometimes doing the dragging) into impossibly dangerous situations. He told her about his imagined travel machine – an old blue police public call box – that was bigger on the inside. It was disguise, he explained enthusiastically. The ship could disguise herself to fit in with any environment they found themselves in on their wild intergalactic adventure. When she pointed out that if they landed at any other time, the box would stick out with a sore thumb, but James disagreed vehemently and told her about perception filters and the idiocy of the human race. The chameleon circuit was stuck, he admitted sheepishly, but he'd grown rather fond of the blue box and had decided not to bother with fixing the circuit.
She'd shrugged and laughed, completely absorbed in this imaginative man's world where they were the Doctor and Rose Tyler, the Stuff of Legends.
Well, if he got a code name, she argued, she should get one too. He'd disagreed. Rose Tyler was a brilliant name, he told her seriously. No one went around saving the universe with a name like James McCrimmon, but if Rose Tyler was defending the galaxy, he was certain her name would inspire confidence. He, at least, would feel very safe.
She shook her head at his absurd man and laughed along with him as he recounted tales of their travels. She jumped in at just the right moments, chipping in with witty remarks and snarky quips, making James – The Doctor, he insisted – laugh.
Neither noticed that they'd long since intertwined their fingers across the table.